While a political furor has surrounded the 2010 health care overhaul, many have said the legal issues the Supreme Court will consider this week when it hears arguments about the law have never been widely disputed. Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, the legal foundation for the law’s requirement that all people get health insurance, has been settled law for 70 years. And no lower appellate court has ruled against the law’s expansion of Medicaid coverage. Yet the court has scheduled three days of arguments of these and other issues.

Are the justices giving due consideration to a complicated legal dispute, or preparing to engage in “judicial activism” to reduce federal power? [more]